Modern automobiles and trucks typically have a front row formed by a driver's seat, a passenger seat, and a central console disposed therebetween. The seats are commonly individually adjustable forwardly, rearwardly, and, quite often, up, down, and over a given range of tilting. With that, a gap is necessarily disposed between each seat and the central console. Some manufacturers may seek to make the gap relatively small to maximize the space available for the seats and the console while other manufacturers leave a relatively large gap as they seek to make ergonomically contoured seat structures. Furthermore, it will be appreciated that the gaps between the seats and the central console can vary with the anterior, posterior, upward, downward, and pivoting adjustment of the respective seat in relation the central console.
Unfortunately, the necessary gap between the seats and the central console creates the risk of articles, particularly those pulled from a seat occupant's pocket or temporarily rested in a seat or on the center console, unintentionally falling into the gap. For instance, it is quite possible for a vehicle occupant's phone, pen, loose change, jewelry, and other valuable or precious articles to fall into the gap. Dropped articles can become wedged between, for instance, the seat support frame and the vehicle floor or console structure. With the confined space provided by the gap, retrieving articles can be difficult and frustrating. Indeed, many articles can be lost without extensive, cumbersome searching. Moreover, the attempt to retrieve dropped articles while driving presents severe danger to the vehicle occupant and bystanders. Still further, trash and debris falling into the gap can accumulate undesirably thereby contributing to an overall lack of cleanliness of the vehicle.
It would, therefore, be advantageous to prevent articles from falling into the gap between vehicle seats and the central console to a difficult to retrieve location. A number of inventors have sought to provide a solution to the issues presented by the seat gap. Under some proposed constructions, a member of foam, cardboard, or some other material is disposed simply to bridge the gap thereby to present a substantially continuous surface. While such constructions may prevent articles from falling into the gap, they do not retain the article. As a result, the item that was prevented from falling into the gap may well simply fall behind the seat or into some other similarly difficult to access location. Other proposed solutions to the issues presented by articles falling into the seat gap comprise accordion-like folding, compressible, or collapsible structures that can be interposed between the seat and the central console thereby to be in position to catch and retain fallen articles. However, many of these inventions fail to present a reasonable method for retrieving the article once it has fallen into the necessarily narrow structures. The seat occupant is thus again faced with the challenge of retrieving the fallen article from a narrow location, or he or she must remove the reception structure to retrieve the dropped article.
In light of the foregoing and further deficiencies left by the prior art, it will be appreciated that there is a recognized and ever increasing need for a device capable not only of catching and retaining dropped articles but also of facilitating their return and recovery by a vehicle occupant in an effective, safe, and convenient manner.